PSA: Steppin’ Up

I think it’s time I help out with hosting a prompt, since I’ve been enjoying them for so long. Ever since Teresa announced that she was ending the Three Things Challenge, I’ve been noodling about asking to host it. And today I decided what the hey, let’s go. If it becomes too onerous, I’ll stop.

I’m going to begin tonight at 10PM my time (Los Angeles), and I’ll set the 3TC to auto-post once a day at that time thereafter. No blue frogs will be necessary. Just use pingbacks or copypasta your link directly into the comments of the post itself. I can’t promise to visit every participant every time, but I will try.

Use the 3TC tag or not as you wish. I probably won’t search for it, but others may, so it’s nice to continue that. I’ll have it on mine.

Happy writing! 😀

Happy Valentine’s Day ❤️

To me!

From all of you! Thank you so much for the group Valentine card!

That really made my night.

Hope everyone has a happy hearts day! ❤️

Big Boring Pile Of Navel Glazery

So, peeps have been sharing all sorts of deep thoughts around Blogville this week. What kind of blogs do they like to read and what do they like to write? Which sorts of award tags do they enjoy receiving, if any? What gets under their skin, if anything? I have been sporadically commenting on these posts, but as is my wont I feel I need to organize my ideas in one place. 🐿

My ideas about blogging aren’t separate from my ideas about other things. I don’t do much compartmentalizing in life any longer, except for work-related purposes. What I’m saying is that I’m not fake here; this blog’s narrator isn’t a persona crafted for ego strokes. I don’t like the person I have to become when I role play online, aka lie. It becomes annoying and stressful after a while to keep up the facade. I lied for a long time and got tired of it. Lying is boring; truth is interesting.*

So, I like to read other bloggers who are also being real. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re posting photos of their face or credit card receipts, but they talk about themselves in an authentic voice. They’re not afraid to reveal mistakes and flaws. They may showcase their art, in the form of stories or photos or poetry, but they don’t exclude their self from their posts. Their blog doesn’t read like an impersonal series of magazine articles ~ I am not interested in that kind of writing. Nor do I want to interact with bloggers who only post links and cliched quotes, while sharing nothing of their real selves. If I want links and quotes, I can access the google. 👍🏻

If you’ve been following me for a while, even a week, you’ll notice that my writing is all over the place. I’ll post an original poem or piece of flash fiction… then I’ll rant about something ridiculous… next I’ll jabber on about a song… or I’ll post a photo of my cat or a sunset or something I colored with pencils. I’ll answer prompt questions about writing or pets or dating or food or movies or wHaTEveR strikes me as fun at the time. I’ll grab a photo and dash off a quick story about it, romance or humor or even science fiction. I’m happy to find other bloggers who are likewise unpredictable in their writing. I enjoy reading what I enjoy writing. Simple! 😀

One note: while I love to read novels and do brainteaser games in meatspace, I’m not a huge fan of either on blogs. I like self-contained posts and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on each one. That’s not fair to the rest of my feed. So, you won’t find me commenting on serialized stories or solving complicated riddles here. 🦉

The time factor also comes into play with awards. Naturally I appreciate when a fellow blogger thinks of me regarding one of the awards going around, and I will always say thanks. I will also try to make time to answer their questions, if they aren’t toooo personal. But I generally don’t want to tag others or make up my own set of questions ~ that’s just my preference.

The other thing that’s come up is do we have a “thick skin” in relation to blogging. This can mean different things. I don’t ask for writing critiques on my work, nor do I receive anything but nice comments, so I’m lucky not to have to deal with negativity in that sense. I used to post about some of my dating site experiences and people offered advice that occasionally bordered on criticism. It sometimes bothered me, but only when they misunderstood me or the situation I’d described. After a while I decided to delete those posts anyway. I later wrote only a few carefully selected dating stories and things went okay.

As far as getting upset about my stats and who comments how many times yada… I’m fairly relaxed in comparison to some other bloggers who seem a bit obsessed. I’m not knocking obsession cuz lord knows I have plenty. Just not this particular one. I do look at the chart of visitors and it’s gone steadily up, so yay. Some days it dips. Idk why.

I don’t keep score, but I have a general idea of fair play. If I get a sense that a blogger I follow never comments on or likes any of my posts after I’ve been participating at their blog for a while, I may rethink if I want to keep following them. To me, this is about reciprocity. I didn’t pay to read your blog; the price is that you read mine. How do I know? Your likes and comments, same as mine to you. As I said, I don’t count, but I get a feeling.

Another note. While I appreciate all my followers, I don’t follow back bloggers who aren’t primarily posting in English. I’m not comfortable if I can’t read the majority of the posts, and no I’m not bothering with a translation since I only use the app.

Sometimes people comment on different things. I usually like photos of flowers sans comment. What’s there to say? Pretty! Eight hundred times. But I try to recognize with a like everything I enjoy. If I agree with an opinion word for word, I might not add anything either. I get that people are busy and follow many blogs; I don’t hold that against them. I don’t expect comments from everyone all the time. But I love them when I get them! ❤️

I think I covered everything that’s been going around on these topics, so I can refer back to this post if peeps want an expanded clarification of any point. Right. 😂

*This is on the tangential topic of truth in dating. I’ve been thinking lately that I feel a lot better, that I’m over my depression of 2017. So, maybe I should think about trying again? But no. Duh! That’s what flipped me into the depression in the first place: I was feeling good during the summer of 2016 and thought I was ready. But I wasn’t ready for the parade of liars and creeps, and I wasn’t ready to begin acting like I have no feelings when these predatory men thought it was fine to be insulting and creepy and critical just because I was “out there.” No, I’m not ready, will never be ready for that again. Call me a snowflake ❄️ or whatever you want, but I don’t like myself when I’m in dating mode. I don’t like the me I have to be to deal with them. 🤮

Housekeeping

Who even understands the algorithmic mystery of why some posts appear in the feed reader and others don’t? We’ve never solved the app gap either, for those of us who prefer phones to ‘puter reading. I make do by keeping a list of faves in the search tab, but I know I miss posts.

In the interest of lightening the burden on my poor reader, I’ve now done a second purge. This time I was quite merciless, if I do say so myself (I do). I’m now hopeful that my reader will deliver more of your freshly pressed posts to me in chronological order.

A gwamma can dream, no? ✨

If I’ve inadvertently sent a follower to the oubliette, my apologies. If your blog is in English and you’ve updated in the past 30 days without offensive content, then give me a nudge and I’ll fish you out. Or add you for the first time if I haven’t yet. Lotta ifs in this para…

What’s “offensive content,” you may ask? Great question! It’s whatever I decide it is, at that moment, arbitrarily. 😂

Another mystery… if anyone can figure out why my landline, which is plugged into the soccer ball, isn’t getting a dial tone, PLMK. Thx!

Monday Meandering

It was bothering me that my full-size bitmojis appeared on my iPhone reader as humongous pictures dropping off the sides of the screen. Other bloggers’ pics do the same, btw ~ not photographs, which seem to know how to behave themselves, but graphics grabbed from the web, which do not. Anyway, I’ve been resizing mine to medium in the app but haven’t noticed a satisfactory difference, so that’s why I went down to thumbnail on this one. It just bugs me when pics are off. Now the thumbnail will look weird when I view my blog on the web… sigh. 😜

*

I finally figured out why my YouTube vids weren’t previewing properly ~ when I take the link from the YouTube app, it’s a shortlink. I then have to paste it in a browser to get a real link that creates a preview. What a royal pain in the ass. Is there any more annoying problem in the world today, I ask you? Oh, for the halcyon daze of olde when we didn’t have the convenience of apps to bitch about and had to trudge 5 miles in the cybersnow every time we wanted to copypasta any damn thing. 🙄

*

I was just about to stop at Target after work on Friday night to buy a space heater when I remembered I had one. And it wasn’t hidden away in a closet ~ it’s right next to the TV cabinet. This is what happens when the unused spaces in your brain get old and frozen. 🥶

*

My MO in Blogland is not to keep score cuz that’s just annoying and frustrating. I follow around 700 blogs and only 500 or so follow me. But who is MO anyway and why am I letting him set precedent? This I began to wonder today as I unfollowed a few bloggers in my feed who never like any of my poasts. Pffft.

To each their own, but if all a blogger does it repost old stuff, and not interact with me, I’m going to be faster with the unfollow click. I mean, I go to the trouble of writing fresh new boring crap for you guys every single day! I don’t want my feed filled with a parade of moldy recyclables. If I see I’ve already hearted it… grrrr!

Seriously one guy reposts his half-dozen sensual love letters to his “goddess” every night and I’m just BARF ALREADY! Write something new to her, dude. Geez. 🤮

*

I just looked up the definition of cartoon cuz I wasn’t sure what counted. Obviously the shows we used to watch on Saturday morning, but comic strips too? Yup. And movies like Frozen? Yup. And those quickie caricatures? Yup. Also, the word comes from Italian, carta (paper), if anyone cares. First known usage was in 1671, as in a preparatory design. You’re welcome. 😜

*

I’m on the Nextdoor app to keep track of local doings. I was motivated to download it when the OCRegister went to a pay site. I miss the OCR, gotta admit, but I’m not gonna pay. I have no paid subscriptions to anything. Nextdoor is sometimes helpful/interesting, but Twitter is actually more on top of breaking emergencies. Of course there are trolls and idiots and assholes on ND because it is social media. People won’t follow rules and simply must jabber on about “the wall” and whatever other stupid BS pops into their heads. 🤬

Naturally there are the sea lion men, barking questions at women, only to tell them that their opinions are invalid. I ran into one of these jerks this weekend who told me I can’t have an opinion on my city after “only” living here 5 years when he’s been here 25. I muted him. It’s too bad they are only mutes and not blocks like Twitter. I would prefer it if he was not able to see and/or reply to me again. Same goes for anyone I mute in the future.

This is one of the things that makes it hard for women to express themselves online (not to mention in meatspace obviously). You have to constantly worry about angering some wacko man, especially if he’s local. Who even knows what might set some lunatic off into a rage? Idk if this guy is totally fine or a nutball, but I got a bad vibe, and so I let him have the last word because I see from other threads that it’s important to him. And I didn’t insult him like another woman did; I just quietly faded away. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m scared of men who seem trollish and unhinged. We read stories all the time about women being stalked and attacked by nutjobs. And crazy men are everywhere. We’re never safe. 😢

No, I’m not being overly dramatic. Just go look up the statistics about violence against women. This is another reason why I quit using dating sites. Besides all the benignly obnoxious jerks and liars and creeps, there are rapists and con men and murderers lurking there. It’s documented. And when some rando gets angry because you reject him after chatting, how do you know which group he falls into?

Not worth the stress.

Selfish Opinion Week [SOW]

Poast yours now! Hurry, before the special coupon expires! 😀

It’s interesting how many of us in this corner of Blogville have given opinions in the past few days about the nature of blogging itself, either how they’ll need to cut back a bit because of time constraints (me and a few others) and/or a general statement regarding what they like or dislike about reading blogs. I must apologize in being remiss for not stating some prefs. You know I haz them. 😈

On a side note, this makes me think about how many millions of blogs there are with loosely connected communities, united by various themes, and how they periodically must engage in these discussions also. If there’s life on other planets, maybe they have blogs too… something to ponder. Are they wondering about us, me in particular? I bet they might be…

Anyway, during these meta convos, it’s apparent to me how many bloggers not only don’t use the phone app (which must be available for laptops too), but also are reading poasts via email. I would literally die if all your poasts and notifications poured into my email, even a dedicated email. How could I possibly deal with that deluge? The very idea makes me dizzy.

Before I used the phone app, I read poasts via the WP reader and that was a million times better than emailed poasts (which I never got because eww). But now I’m app-only because of the “save” feature and the ease of reading/writing. I’ve set up a search list for my dozen or so favorite prompters since sometimes there are app gaps. I really recommend that bloggers at least try these newfangled ideas instead of deleting blogs from their followed list for “posting too much.” 🙄

Naturally, that’s only a rec, and everyone is free to ignore it. Now, onto some other preferences that peeps will ignore. Why the hell not? It’s Selfish Opinion Week and I am getting in on the action, so to speak. Er write. Not targeting anyone in particular, just people who do the things. 😂

1. Teaser blogs. You know who you are. You allow only a first line or snippet of your poast to appear in the reader, so we have to click through. Annoying as f*ck. Not only that, but there are a few who even after that require further clickage to another site to read the rest of the article. What site even? Welp, we won’t know until we get there. Omg HATE! It might be another blog or a Buzzfeed article or… whatever. No, I am not opposed to bloggers making money from their writing via ads, but do it in a way that doesn’t inconvenience ME. Cuz when I am reading your poast, at that point it is all about me, not you. (PS, I don’t click through. Will not. Unless it’s about kitties. Maybe. 🐱)

2. Photo mania. I like a couple pics in a poast. I usually put one, maybe two. I no longer do the photo prompts and I’m not talking about those ~ I’m talking about a regular essay, such as this one, but with PHOTOS randomly shoveled in throughout. Whyyy? They make the poast take forever to load and sometimes the app simply crashes. Only a few of you do this, so it’s not an enormous problem, but still. It’s SOW, and I’ve got a double coupon right here. Two for the price of one, neener!

That’s all. As you were.

Finally!

Sorry to go on again about this, but I just didn’t understand why I never got notifs of happy things from WP. They used to send me notifs, and occasionally they will send a jagged blue arrow to tell me my “stats are booming,” but that’s all. So random. I’m still waiting for my 💯 days poasting in a row congrats.

Anyway. Yayyy! Great month! See ya on the flip side.

November Rain

Welp, we finally got some rain… so I’ve had a rain migraine for 3 days instead of a dry wind migraine. Lol, can’t win. But that did not stop me from finishing NaNo ~ yep, I made it all the way to 50,241 words, which have been verified. I had to copypasta all 41 of my poasts into their form so they could count the words.

Of course this is a giant mess, as you might imagine, with 41 poasts, not all in sync, some of the minor characters’ names mixed up, notes mashed in throughout about changing stuff, fixing dates and nicknames, consolidating locations, etc. Can’t wait to sort it out into my main doc. Plus I still have to write the rest of it! It’s not nearly finished at all. 🙄

But still… yayyy! I didn’t think I’d make it and I did.

Another yay ~ as of this morning I have 500 WordPress followers. Yippee! 🎉🎈🎶 WP doesn’t send me any congrats like they do other bloggers. I’ve never received that 💯 days in a row notice, forex. But look:

I might not be as good at math as I once was but I can still add 499 + 1. Thank you Papershots! What a great name for a great blog too! 😀

So, that ends the month for me on a high note. Onward to more writing! And happy Friday, everyone! 🐱🌧💕

Eleven, Fandango Style

Fandango received an award and told everyone to play along. So bossy!

1. If you had to choose to be on a reality show, which one would it be?

– I hatessss them, unless game shows count. If they do, then I might like to embarrass myself on Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune.

2. If you could change your name, what would it be?

– Fandango. 😂😂😂 Actually, I’ve been thinking about this cuz I kept my married name post-divorce so I could have the same name as my children, but now they’ve gone and changed theirs. I’m stuck with a name of peeps I never see. I don’t wanna change it back to the original cuz I don’t know any of my own peeps either. Maybe I’ll just pick a new name out of a hat. NOT THAT HAT! 😱😱😱

3. How long have you been blogging?

– I began this blog in March 2011, but it had many lulls. I’ve had other blogs, all inactive or offline now except for my private diary blog that I’m using for NaNoWriMo entries (almost at 50K!).

4. How frequently do you blog?

– Lately 1-3 poasts per day. I’m surprised I haven’t received one of those woohoo 🎉 notices yet about 💯 days in a row.

5. Share the link to a favorite post of yours, why is this your favorite?

– The Duke vs. the Secretary. This is a fun poast with many views and comments.

6. Do you check your stats for the countries that have ‘visited’ your blog?

– Rarely.

7. Which countries are you missing from your WordPress globe and would really like to see filled in on your map?

– Don’t know, don’t care. I’m just happy there are a few things I don’t obsess over, and this blog stat crap falls neatly into that category.

8. Are you a ‘crafty’ person? (knit, sew, paint, macrame … ?)

– I used to sew, knit, embroider, do needlepoint, crewel, etc. A long time ago I began a tee shirt painting biz, but it was too stressful on my wrist. Love beading (costly tho). Have over a dozen scrapbooks. But I find my old eyes get a bit tired and irritated for this type of work lately. I have many unfinished projects. 🙁

9. Assuming that you celebrate, do you shop in advance for Christmas or do you leave everything to the last minute?

– I don’t celebrate as such. I enjoy lighting candles for Chanukah and I exchange small gifts with my immediate family that are usually purchased pretty far in advance. That’s it. No “Jewish Christmas” here.

10. Do you participate in sports?

– Blech.

11. Are you a sweet or savory person?

– I eat sugar until I barf, and then I switch to pizza for one meal. Then back to sugar. This is how I maintain my slim figure and stellar health. I should write a book…

Page 7, Line 5

Via The Haunted Wordsmith.

All I have here is the Berkeley Law magazine, which just came in the mail. It will have to do in lieu of a book.

“It combined two things I really care about: ensuring copyright law doesn’t block otherwise legitimate fair uses, and preserving video games I grew up playing,”

It makes me happy to know that quoting this quote is within the realm of fair use, qua the quote itself, so the quotee is not going to be mad at me if he googles his quote one day to see if anyone is discussing its intellectual merits and finds it plopped on a cupcake, cats, and romance novel blarg. Actually it’s more of a cats, angry poetry, and weird flash blog these days, isn’t it? Hmm. How would you label this mess? I gave up as you can see from my relatively recently updated tagline. Am I allowed to use two ly-adjectives in a row? Can I haz ruling?

What the article is actually about, if anyone cares, is preserving deactivated video games. Bet you never thought about that. Well, other people have. That’s why they’re in law school and you’re not, pffft.

I wonder what happened to that old Ladybug game my mommy used to play. It was one of the first up. I’ll never forget the annoying chomp chomp chomp sound as the bugs nommed up all the things.

That’s all. 🐞🐞🐞